My Chemical Romance fans attending the group's July 26 show at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles were treated to the first ever live performance of War Beneath The Rain, an unreleased song that the emo superstars recorded, before their break-up, for what was supposed to be their fifth album.
The New Jersey quintet began work on the album, provisionally titled The Paper Kingdom, in Los Angeles in the summer of 2012. But the record was never completed, for on March 22, 2013, the group announced that they were breaking up, telling fans "Thanks for all of your support, and for being part of the adventure."
Introducing the song on Saturday night at the 56,000-capacity home of the Los Angeles Dodgers, frontman Gerard Way said, “I don’t remember how long ago it was, but before the band broke up, we had a studio in North Hollywood and we were making a record that never came out. And this was one of the songs we really loved from it. It was just us in the studio with our friend Doug McKean, he was there recording it. His family’s here tonight, I want this to go out to them.”
McKean, a recording engineer who worked with the band on The Black Parade, died of a brain hemorrhage in 2022.
Watch the world premiere of the song below:
In October 2013, during an interview with Scottish comic book writer Grant Morrison at the Sydney Graphic Festival in Australia, Gerard Way reflected on the band's break-up. and on the album that they were working upon at the time.
According to MCR blog Sammy Literally, Way told his audience, "I fell back into a lot of old habits cuz it was easy, because I felt in control. I wasn’t in control at all, and then after that climbing out of it it got worse.
"It got worse because I became even more paralyzed and more depressed, and I started to work on a record that was a concept record about a group of parents in a support group because they all lost their children in a horrible way and that was supposed to be the last record and that’s not story I wanted to tell and the songs reflected that. You could hear it. And all the joy was gone."
Other songs from The Paper Kingdom that have never been given an official release include Wake Up!, Into Your Arms, Birthday Girl and High Hopes.
Since their 2019 reunion, My Chemical Romance have not confirmed any plans to record new music.
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